Ugh. Just … ugh. Wheeler takes us to Kaminoa, where a showdown takes place between our main characters and the Empire, and the whole thing is just a ridiculous mess. The main tension of the story comes from a “Is Luke alive?” plot, which is dumb, since we all know he is. I find it odd that authors choose to go this route, and this is the second time in this series alone that Wheeler uses this as a plot point. I can see a different writer managing to successfully work this kind of point against the reader’s expectations, but here it doesn’t work.

It also doesn’t help that Wheeler drops characters and items into the story to serve no other purpose than to move the plot forward. First, we get a Kaminoan who tells Han, after he’s given Luke up for dead, how Luke could still be alive. Later, the characters have to solve a problem, and Han has the solution, which is something that he noticed about 30 pages ago, but neglected to mention. It’s sloppy, and Wheeler still doesn’t seem to have a good grasp of the main characters. They sound right, but they don’t act right, and they all make pretty dumb decisions.

This might be a good time to point out that I’m reading these books so you don’t have to. Skip over this series all together. Yes, I’m only four books into it, but I can already tell you these aren’t worth your time. They don’t seem to add much to the Expanded Universe, either, so I’m not sure why anyone would want to read these.

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"